If you purchased one of our bubble tea kit, instructions are already included and you can click on the following link to download the quick instructions PDF, however this recipe blog will give more details of the process of making your own bubble tea.

Cook Tapioca

Tapioca Pearls are dry and fragile. They crumble when you squeeze them. Unlike quick cooking tapioca, which is hard and bouncy. If tapioca pearls isn’t your thing, you can skip this step and add something else like grass jelly or one of our other toppings we have available in our shop.

Each serving requires 2 tablespoons of Tapioca pearls. Boil 600ml of water in a pot. For additional servings, add 200 ml of water for every addition of 2 tablespoons of tapioca pearls.

Once the water is boiling, stir the water and add the tapioca pearls into the water. Set the temperature down to medium. Note: medium setting on a gas cooker might still be too high. If you find that the water dries out, set the gas cooker to low.

Stir the tapioca pearls to ensure they do not stick together or to the pot. Once the tapioca pearls are floating, cover with lid leaving a small gap, start the timer for 30 minutes and check every so often to ensure the pearls are not stuck to the bottom or to each other.

Whilst the tapioca pearls are cooking, you can make the sugar bath for the pearls. To make a simple sugar syrup, add 1:1 ratio of sugar to hot water, e.g. add 100g of sugar to 100 ml of hot water. Ensure the sugar is fully dissolved. Tip: We would advise to use brown sugar. You can also use honey instead.

After cooking the tapioca pearls for 30 minutes, turn off the heat and cover the pot fully with the lid for 18 minutes. After 18 minutes have past, drain the tapioca pearls using a colander and rinse with cold water until they are cool enough to touch. Please be careful as the tapioca pearls will still be hot. Rinsing the tapioca pearls in cold water stops the cooking process and prevents the pearls from becoming too soft. Once the tapioca pearls are cool enough to touch, soak them in the sugar bath.

Brew Tea

For the best tasting flavour, tea needs to be brewed at a specific temperature and for a certain amount of time. This helps unlock its full taste and smell which might be destroyed if brewed at too high water temperature or too long brewing time. One of the key reason any tea taste bitter, especially jasmine tea is because the temperature of the water is too hot. Brewing the tea too long is another factor to look out for. The longer the tea is brewed, the more tannins that are extracted which is another reason for tea tasting bitter.

Boil 200 ml of water and let it cool for 1 minute. Kettles usually boils water to 100 degrees celcius. We’ve calculated that if you leave the water to cool for approximately 1 minute, the temperature should drop to around 92-95 degrees celcius, which is the correct brewing temperature for black tea. Add 2 tablespoons of black tea into a tea pot followed by the hot water and let it brew for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, filter out the tea into a cup.

Milk or Creamer
If you’re using our bubble tea kit, simply add one whole powder pack into the hot tea and stir to mix. You can also use approximately 50ml of fresh milk instead.

Hot or Cold
This is where you decide if you want to make a hot bubble tea or cold bubble tea. For hot drink, add approximately 200 ml of hot water. For cold drinks, add your ice and top up with cold water. For more fun, add the tea and powder mix into a cocktail shaker with ice, water and sugar (depending on how sweet you like your bubble tea). Give it a good shake then pour to serve.

All that’s left is to add the jumbo straw and you’re ready to start enjoying your bubble tea you made.